Note: the quotes are roughly ordered by "topics", but the order of the
topics is "random". In particular,
(a) higher on the list does not mean "better"; (b) the quote number
can change when new quotes are inserted.Current Count: 460.

"What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?" (Doctor Who)

"Luck is where preparation meets opportunity." (Earl Nightingale)

"Chance favors the prepared mind." (Louis Pasteur)

"Adventure is just bad planning." (Roald Amundsen)

"The harder I work, the luckier I get." (Sam Goldwyn)

"It is bad luck to be superstitious." (Andrew W. Mathis)

"We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of
those we don't like." (Jean Cocteau)

"Absence of proof is not proof of absence." (William Cowper)

"Just because your are paranoid does not mean they are not out
to get you." (Henry Kissinger)

"Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined."
(Samuel Goldwyn)

"Not everyone who wanders is lost." (Tolkien)

"There are two kinds of light -- the glow that illuminates, and the
glare -- that obscures." (James Thurber)

"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
(Wernher Von Braun)

"My theory is that if you look confident you can pull off anything -
even if you have no clue what you're doing." (Jessica Alba)

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." (Richard Feynman)

"Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know."
(Bertrand Russell)

"It is completely unimportant. That is why it is so interesting!"
(Agatha Christie)

"Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing."
(Ambrose Bierce)

"Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules. Mathematics is a
game with rules and no objectives." (Unknown)

"In theory, there should be no difference between theory and practice,
but in practice, there is." (William T. Harbaugh)

"Theory is important, at least in theory." (Keith Martin)

"There is nothing more practical than a good theory." (Kurt Lewin)

"Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you
mine are still greater." (Albert Einstein)

"The reason that your friends and ours cannot understand mathematics
is not because they have no head for figures, but because they are
unable to achieve the degree of concentration required to follow a
moderately involved sequence of inferences." (Gale and Shapley)

"If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only
because they do not realize how complicated life is." (John von
Neumann)

"There are two ways to do great mathematics. The first is to be
smarter than everybody else. The second way is to be stupider than
everybody else -- but persistent." (Raoul Bott)

"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."
(Albert Einstein)

"There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand
binary, and those who don't." (Nerdy Joke)

"Halloween is really the same as Christmas because OCT 31 = DEC 25."
(Nerdy Joke)

"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to
your grandmother." (Albert Einstein)

"If I were your wife I would put poison in your coffee!"
"And if I were your husband I would drink it."
(Nancy Astor and Winston Churchill)

"I write down everything I want to remember. That way, instead of
spending a lot of time trying to remember what it is I wrote down, I
spend the time looking for the paper I wrote it down on." (Beryl
Pfizer)

"A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it is written on."
(Samuel Goldwyn)

"Promise: a verbal contract not to be re-negotiated, even in light of
favorably changed circumstances." (Yevgeniy Dodis)

"Trust, but verify." (Ronald Reagan)

"Trust is good, but control is better." (Vladimir Lenin)

"If you can't convince them, confuse them."
(Harry S. Truman)

"If I look confused it's because I'm thinking." (Sam Goldwyn)

"A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought." (Victor Hugo)

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss
of enthusiasm." (Winston Churchill)

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes
off your goal." (Henry Ford)

"Ability will never catch up with the demand for it." (Malcolm Forbes)

"Ability to respond will never catch up with the amount of email
demanding it." (Yevgeniy Dodis)

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
(Albert Einstein)

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'"
(Isaac Asimov)

"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes
deserves to be called a scholar." (Donald Foster)

"To err is human; to make real mess, you need a computer." (Unknown)

"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something
completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete
fools." (Douglas Adams)

"The great tragedy of Science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis
by an ugly fact." (Thomas H. Huxley)

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing
that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot
possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to
get at or repair." (Douglas Adams)

"All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that
the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if
you can't t get them together again, there must be a reason. By all
means, do not use a hammer." (IBM Manual, 1925)

"The unavoidable price of reliability is simplicity." (C.A.R. Hoare)

"... when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth." (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

"The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple." (Oscar Wilde)

"One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage, if no one is thinking of
firing it." (Anton Chekhov)

"Moral victory: part of a sentence preceeding the word 'but'." (Yevgeniy Dodis)

"Reality: part of a sentence following the word 'but'." (Yevgeniy Dodis)

"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make
sense." (Tom Clancy)

"Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane."
(Philip K. Dick)

"People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say
something designed to get what they want." (David Mamet)

"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are." (Anais Nin)

"Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with
one's own opinion." (Ambrose Bierce)

"I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one's wife
happy. First, let her think she's having her own way. And second, let
her have it." (Lyndon B. Johnson)

"I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury."
(Groucho Marx)

"They say marriages are made in Heaven. But so is thunder and
lightning." (Clint Eastwood)

"Any home can be a castle if the King and Queen are in love"
(Vinyl Wall Decal)

"Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your heart or burn
down your house, you can never tell." (Joan Crawford)

"Men are like parking places. The good ones are taken, and the ones
available are usually handicapped." (Nerdy Joke)

"My gosh this is a place with lots of strange people around... but I
feel very comfortable here, so I must be one of them." (Paul Garabedian)

"You must be odd to be number one." (Unknown Geek)

"What are the odds of finding a bachelor mathematician?
The odds are good, but the goods are odd." (Nerdy Joke)

"Beauty: The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a
husband." (Ambrose Bierce)

"When a man marries his mistress, he creates a job opening." (Maureen Dowd)

"Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the
patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder."
(Ambrose Bierce)

"Jealous: Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be
lost only if not worth keeping." (Ambrose Bierce)

"I haven't reported my missing credit card to the police because
whoever stole it is spending less than my wife." (Ilie Nastase)

"Marriage is like a bank account. You put it in, you take it out, you
lose interest." (Irwin Corey)

"Getting married for sex is like buying a 747 for the free peanuts."
(Jeff Foxworthy)

"Don't marry for money; you can borrow it cheaper." (Scottish Proverb)

"An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have; the older she
gets the more interested he is in her." (Agatha Christie)

"Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't
matter." (Mark Twain)

"Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street
bald and still think they are beautiful." (Unknown)

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time
to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye." (Miss Piggy)

"I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all
things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be
artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious
experience." (Shelley Winters)

"I'm a personality as well as an actress. Show me an actress who isn't
a personality, and you'll show me a woman who isn't a star."
(Katharine Hepburn)

"Acting is a nice childish profession - pretending you're someone else
and at the same time selling yourself." (Katharine Hepburn)

"Privacy is effective ability to misrepresent yourself." (Dan Geer)

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't
matter and those who matter don't mind." (Dr. Seuss)

"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each
other." (Eric Hoffer)

"If one synchronised swimmer drowns, do all the rest have to drown too?"
(Steven Wright)

"If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was
because I couldn't swim." (Margaret Thatcher)

"You laugh at me because I'm different, but I laugh at you because
you're all the same." (Unknown)

"In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different." (Coco Chanel)

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick
society." (Krishnamurti)

"Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves."
(Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

"There is no sense being precise when you don't even know what you are
talking about." (John von Neumann)

"Finer score granularity gives the appearance of precision at the
expense of accuracy." (Michael Mitzenmacher, rephrased)

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that
can be counted counts." (Albert Einstein)

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then
you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and
I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have
two ideas." (George Bernard Shaw)

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by
those who have not got it." (George Bernard Shaw)

"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value
of nothing." (Oscar Wilde)

"Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not
as they ought to be." (Ambrose Bierce)

"The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being
either proven right or pleasantly surprised." (George F. Will)

"There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good
sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more."
(Woody Allen)

"Optimist: A proponent of the doctrine that black is white." (Ambrose
Bierce)

"Optimism: The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful,
including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and
everything right that is wrong." (Ambrose Bierce)

"A key to resolving any conflict is to identify a common goal." (Anna
Karpman)

"A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business." (Henry Ford)

"Spare no expense to make everything as economical as possible." (Sam
Goldwyn)

"To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of
happiness." (Bertrand Russell)

"Chop your own wood, and it will warm you twice." (Henry Ford)

"The cheap man pays twice." (Russian Proverb)

"I expected nothing... and I got it in abundance." (Oded Goldreich,
about students' lecture motes)

"You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for
bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing." (Thomas Sowell)

"Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing."
(Albert Einstein)

"If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's
evil. But the best that you can call him is an underachiever."
(Woody Allen, rephrased)

"Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last
fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat." (Sir Julian Huxley)

"I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation
if He didn't." (Jules Renard)

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." (Aldous Huxley)

"Illusions do not become real no matter how hard you look at them."
(Paulo Barreto)

"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand." (Kurt Vonnegut)

"A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes." (James Feibleman)

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich." (Napoleon)

"The price of freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press, is
that we must put up with a good deal of rubbish." (Robert Jackson)

"The speech might be free, but the bail costs money." (Earnest)

"Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people
are right more than half the time." (E. B. White)

"Democracy: false fact that `my ignorance is just as good as your
knowledge'." (Isaac Asimov, slightly restated)

"Vote: The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool
of himself and a wreck of his country." (Ambrose Bierce)

"The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the
votes decide everything." (Joseph Stalin)

"Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship."
(Harry S Truman)

"You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist." (Indira Gandhi)

"Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and
protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to
beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status."
(David Mamet)

"The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day
after the revolution." (Hannah Arendt)

"So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause." (George Lucas)

"It is true that liberty is precious - so precious that it must be
rationed." (Vladimir Lenin)

"The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions."
(Alfred Adler)

"It's not brave if you do not know the consequences." (Charanjit Jutla)

"A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the
time, and a courageous person afterward." (Jean Paul Richter)

"Ghost: The outward and visible sign of an inward fear." (Ambrose Bierce)

"Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of
power." (John Steinbeck)

"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in time of
great moral crises maintain their neutrality." (Dante Alighieri)

"Fortune does not change men, it unmasks them." (Suzanne Necker)

"The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and
enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not
asked to lend money." (Mark Twain)

"Acquaintance: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but
not well enough to lend to." (Ambrose Bierce)

"Friendship: A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only
one in foul." (Ambrose Bierce)

"It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend."
(William Blake)

"Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else."
(Will Rogers)

"You see a person's true colors when you are no longer beneficial to
their life..." (Jerose)

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the
silence of our friends." (Martin Luther King Jr.)

"Every society honors its live conformists and its dead
troublemakers." (Mignon McLauglin)

"Human history is the sad result of each one looking out for himself."
(Julio Cortazar)

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."
(Sir Winston Churchill)

"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never
worshipped anything but himself." (Sir Richard Francis Burton)

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an
understanding of ourselves." (Carl Jung)

"Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves." (Gene Fowler)

"Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me."
(Ambrose Bierce)

"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
ambition." (Carl Sagan)

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambition." (Mark Twain)

"An honest politician is one who when he's bought, stays bought."
(Simon Cameron)

"In politics stupidity is not a handicap." (Napoleon)

"To rely upon conviction, devotion, and other excellent spiritual
qualities--that is not to be taken seriously in politics." (Vladimir Lenin)

"The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of
anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of
politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics." (Thomas Sowell)

"Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles."
(Ambrose Bierce)

"Politics: The conduct of public affairs for private advantage."
(Ambrose Bierce)

"Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial
reasons." (Bertrand Russell)

"Patriotism is the conviction that your country is superior to all
others because you were born in it." (George Bernard Shaw)